1964 Personal Role Radio, new

If you suffer from geek allergies, now is your opportunity to move farther along the Internet Trail.

This post, however, will get us much closer to the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

What you see here is a brand-new Army "morale radio," right out of the box -- an R-1289 PRR receiver. Vendor: General Electric Company, Radio Receiver Department, Utica, New York, USA. Date of manufacture: September 1964.

The first wave of American troops in Vietnam would have gotten this from the quartermaster. I just got mine from eBay -- I was a little young to be sent to 'Nam in late 1964, being just 3½ years old at the time.

It's a strange thing, getting something that's 52 years old basically new out of the box. Call it a time capsule, which it is.

A TIME CAPSULE complete with an instruction manual, a schematic and an eight transistor radio in a moisture-proof canvas pouch. 

Moisture-proof is good for things being shipped to the jungle.

From what the Internet (and the eBay seller) tells me, this little GE model -- the P925 back in The World -- was the last of the military "morale radios," or "Personal Role Radio (PRR)" in Army speak. By 1964, after all, what young American didn't already have a transistor radio?

T.B. Player certainly did when he shipped out in '64.

This has been your Geek Minute on Revolution 21. We now return you to your modern, digitized programming.

Has killing become Job No. 1 for cops?

NOTE: This video shows a man being shot to death. Discretion is strongly advised.

Over on Rod Dreher's American Conservative blog, it took exactly nine comments before someone started throwing around the L-word to denigrate anyone expressing any doubt that St. Louis cops may have been too quick to turn a disturbed, steak-knife wielding individual into Swiss cheese.

Could there be any more telling example of the dangerous ideological warfare this country is engaged in? Someone had just watched a cell-phone video of a man being shot to death, and the first instinct after someone says "Whoa! Wait a minute!" was to politicize the entire thing. To start, without any evidence of anyone's actual political leanings, hurling the word "liberal" as an epithet.

The video above isn't the only tragedy we are witnessing here. It's also tragic that, in a world gripped by spiritual, cultural and social crises, the only thing Western civilization (or what is left of it)  has left is ideology.

If that’s the way we’re going to roll these days, I suppose it would be equally “fair” to throw out the F-word — fascist — to describe anyone who’d be so damned quick to politicize a tragic death from the get-go, taking a knee-jerk position that police were absolutely, positively right to gun down a guy with a steak knife and dismissing any questioning of the officers’ actions, period.

HERE'S a thought: A world without doubt is a breeding ground for genocidal maniacs.

Here’s another thought, this one specifically dealing with the "officer-involved shooting" of Kajieme Powell in St. Louis: There were people reasonably close to the officers’ line of fire. There were storefronts behind the guy that appeared to be in the line of fire. What if the cops had missed with a few rounds?

What if they’d missed and there was a ricochet off of a brick wall?

Most hunters know better than to pull the trigger when there’s a possibility you might hit something else if you miss your target. Many cops, it would seem, not so much.


FURTHERMORE, why not slowly back away to keep separation between you and the mentally-ill guy with a knife and buy a little time for other options? Why not put the door of the police SUV between you and the disturbed man?

Buy time. Try to engage. Make an effort to calm the guy down.

Why is deadly force seemingly the first and only option in such situations? And note that the officers’ guns were out the second they got out of their vehicle.

I can’t say for certain whether or not the shooting was justified but, as others in the media have said, this just doesn’t look right.


I THINK the St. Louis shooting -- not to mention the egregious police misbehavior during the Ferguson, Mo.,  protests -- raises numerous legitimate questions that require answers and not being derided as a “liberal” — a veritable enemy of “truth, justice and the American Way.”

I wouldn’t think twice if the St. Louis incident was the response of two infantrymen on the battlefield. But police officers aren’t infantrymen — or at least they used not to be. I think it raises a legitimate question of whether cops now are being trained as such and, if so, why?

But there’s no room for questions in Ideological America, where the “other side” is always the Other, and we’re always spoiling for a fight. As God is my witness, this will not end well.

Because Obama

Or . . . Second City goes yard, clears the bases.

By the way, does Vladimir Putin get his Nobel Peace Prize now?

What on earth you tryin' to do?

As we stand on the edge of an abyss called Syria, preparing to wage "limited" war against its government in the name of "peace" -- and to do so unprovoked and without a United Nations mandate, in the name of "international law" -- a few questions come to mind:

■ Exactly how blind to tragic irony are the Obama Administration and trigger-happy members of Congress?

■ If we do attack the military assets of Syrian President Bashar Assad, which some reports indicate are being dispersed among civilians, what do we hope to accomplish? I mean, really?

■ If Assad doesn't stop using chemical weapons, where do we stop? Do we ever stop the attacks?

■ If the goal is regime change, how does that benefit the United States? What's the best-case scenario post-Assad? Given that groups linked to al-Qaida are the most capable among the Syrian rebels, what are the odds of a best-case outcome here? No magical thinking allowed.

■ Relatedly, would a legally questionable, unprovoked attack on Syria by the United States make matters better or worse?

■ What's the worst-case scenario if the United States attacks Syria? Just how badly could this cascade out of control?

■ Are the odds of disastrous unintended consequences greater than those of the best-case scenario? If the odds are 50-50 or worse, WTF?

■ Given our lack of success in fostering stable, liberal governments in Iraq and Afghanistan after years of "boots on the ground" and countless billions of dollars in U.S. aid, how are "limited" attacks with bombs and cruise missiles supposed to further that goal in Syria? (See regime change and al-Qaida above.)

■ Will a brand-new Syrian regime get the Assad treatment if it starts doing to the Alawites and Christians what Assad's regime has been doing to rebel areas in Syria? I mean doing on a massive scale what rebel elements already are doing to Alawites and Christians when the opportunity presents itself.

■ Is our involvement in Syria and our recent history in the Middle East more reminiscent of a peace-loving democratic republic or an overextended, corrupt and declining empire?

■  If Assad retaliates by using chemical weapons against the Israelis or NATO ally Turkey, what do we do next? Start World War III? If we didn't, would that "undermine the credibility of other U.S. security commitments"?

■ If we're willing to go to war because Syria allegedly has flouted international law regarding the use of chemical weapons, why would it be all right for the United States to flout international law regarding waging war? Is international vigilantism now a cherished American value?

■ Vietnam veteran John Kerry, 1971: "Thirty years from now, when our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say 'Vietnam' and not mean a desert, not a filthy, obscene memory, but mean instead the place where America finally turned, and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning."

Secretary of State John Kerry, 2013: "This debate is about the world's red line, it's about humanity's red line. And it's a red line that anyone with a conscience ought to draw. This debate is also about Congress's own red line. You, the United States Congress, agreed to the chemical weapons convention. You, the United States Congress, passed the Syria Accountability Act, which says Syria's chemical weapons - quote, 'threaten the security of the Middle East and the national security interests of the United States.' You, the Congress, have spoken out about grave consequences if Assad in particular used chemical weapons."

Vietnam was a red line, too. We had to stop the "dominoes" from falling to the Red Menace in Southeast Asia. Mortal threat to the United States and all that. Why is the Vietnam War a filthy, obscene memory, but Syria absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part, mainly ours? Explain.

■ If senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham advocate a particular course of action concerning foreign-policy, isn't doing the exact opposite always the wisest course of action?

JUST ASKING . . . before it's too late.

The way we are

"This is not who we are, and it's certainly not who we represent when it comes to the great majority of men and women in uniform who are serving there."

-- Leon Panetta,
secretary of defense

Actually, when this kind of thing -- and worse -- happens often enough, it kind of is who we are.

And we seem to be on a macabre streak in Afghanistan. That's not even getting into the streak of "not who we are" U.S. troops were on in Iraq -- or the official torture that went on at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and at top-secret CIA prisons abroad.

No, I'd say the record indicates this is absolutely who we have become after more than a decade of endless war. It probably is who we were even before almost 11 years of endless war.

Think we have a cultural problem much? Do not delude yourself that it's limited to the young kids in U.S. uniforms. Their "not who we are" behavior didn't just arise out of nowhere.

Thanks to the Los Angeles Times for pulling back the mask just a little bit more.

L'Union soviétique, c'est nous

Game over.

We need to be out of Afghanistan, and we need to be out yesterday, for we have turned into the Soviet Union, so far as our misadventure there goes.

FROM Reuters today:

Western forces shot dead 16 civilians including nine children in southern Kandahar province on Sunday, Afghan officials said, in a rampage that witnesses said was carried out by American soldiers who were laughing and appeared drunk.

One Afghan father who said his children were killed in the shooting spree accused soldiers of later burning the bodies.

Witnesses told Reuters they saw a group of U.S. soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar's Panjwayi district at around 2 am, enter homes and open fire.

The incident, one of the worst of its kind since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, is likely to deepen the divide between Washington and Kabul.

The U.S. embassy in Kabul said an American soldier had been detained over the shooting. It added that anti-U.S. reprisals were possible following the killings, which come just weeks after U.S. soldiers burned copies of the Koran at a NATO base, triggering widespread anti-Western protests.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the rampage as "intentional murders" and demanded an explanation from the United States. His office said the dead included nine children and three women.

An Afghan minister earlier told Reuters that a lone U.S. soldier had killed up to 16 people when he burst into homes in villages near his base in the middle of the night.

Panjwayi district is about 35 km (22 miles) west of the provincial capital Kandahar city. The district is considered the spiritual home of the Taliban and is believed to be a hive of insurgent activity.

Haji Samad said 11 of his relatives were killed in one house, including his children. Pictures showed blood-splattered walls where the children were killed.

"They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them," a weeping Samad told Reuters at the scene.

"I saw that all 11 of my relatives were killed, including my children and grandchildren," said Samad, who had left the home a day earlier.

I SWEAR to God, if Ronald Reagan were alive and nobody told him the recent history of the Afghan occupation was that of his own troops, he'd be arming the Taliban to fight us.



UPDATE: The general secretary premier president has spoken:

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attacks, calling them in a statement an “inhuman and intentional act” and demanding justice. Both President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta called Mr. Karzai, expressing condolences and promising thorough investigations. “This incident is tragic and shocking, and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama said in a statement.

BULLSHIT. I'm not even an Afghan, but I would call three outrages in three months . . . a pattern. I also would say that three outrages in three months -- that pattern -- absolutely points to problems with the "exceptional" character of the American military, with the training of the American military and with politicians like Obama's and others' ongoing abuse of our armed forces and those who serve in them.

That we're coming undone in Afghanistan doesn't shock me. What does shock me is that, after a decade of this foolishness, we're not getting daily footage back of "exceptional" American soldiers smoking crack out of mortar tubes.

They like us! They really like us!

I was just looking at The New York Times. Wow, that Afghanistan thing is just going really swimmingly for us, isn't it?

I don't know about you, but I'm getting the feeling the Afghans don't want . . . OH MY GOODNESS! LOOK! IT'S THE CATHOLICS, AND THEY'RE BURNING YOUR BIRTH-CONTROL PILLS AND POKING HOLES IN YOUR CONDOMS! STOP THEM! STOP THEM!

Now, where were we?

OH, YES, this little thing. Nothing to see here, really. Don't worry your little head about it.

Armed with rocks, bricks, pistols and wooden sticks, protesters angry over the burning of Korans at the largest American base in Afghanistan this week took to the streets in demonstrations in a half-dozen provinces on Wednesday that left at least seven dead and many more injured.

The fury does not appear likely to abate soon. Members of Parliament called on Afghans to take up arms against the American military, and Western officials said they feared that conservative mullahs might incite more violence at the weekly Friday Prayer, when a large number of people worship at mosques.

“Americans are invaders, and jihad against Americans is an obligation,” said Abdul Sattar Khawasi, a member of Parliament from the Ghorband district in Parwan Province, where at least four demonstrators were killed in confrontations with the police on Wednesday.

Standing with about 20 other members of Parliament, Mr. Khawasi called on mullahs and religious leaders “to urge the people from the pulpit to wage jihad against Americans.”

President Hamid Karzai is scheduled to address both houses of Parliament on Thursday morning.

REALLY, there's nothing to see here. Move along.

Go now . . . in the name of Eros, go vanquish the Real Enemy.

Nation-building in Afghanistan

Nation-building in Afghanistan always has been a dicey proposition.

Actually, it's always been a failed one. Didn't work so well for the British way back when, and we know what happened to the Soviet effort a couple of decades or so ago.

The American attempt hasn't been going so well, either -- and that's before one starts to wonder exactly what the hell kind of nation we intend on building there, a question raised by this pair of MSNBC stories:

Story 1

Days after the Marines apologized for a flag resembling the Nazi “SS” symbol, new questions are being raised about an Army base in Afghanistan reportedly called “Combat Outpost Aryan.”

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which first raised the controversy over the “SS” photograph, is now demanding that the outpost be renamed and the circumstances surrounding the naming of the base be investigated.

MRFF founder Mike Weinstein told msnbc.com that he was contacted by numerous U.S. and Afghan soldiers who were upset about the name of the base and wanted it changed. He said he felt compelled to go forward with a complaint.

(snip)

The Department of Defense, however, has said it's all a misunderstanding. A military spokesman told the Army Times that the base name was due to a misunderstanding and a misspelling. The spokesman said the name was actually "Combat Outpost Arian," named for a historical Persian tribe from western Afghanistan. Commander William Speaks told the Huffington Post that the word "Arian" is frequently used by Afghans, and pointed to the name Ariana Airlines.

Weinstein called the military's explanation completely bogus. "At first they said it didn't exist, and now they are saying it does exist but that it is a different name."

Story 2

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the Marine Corps on Friday to re-investigate and take appropriate action against the Marine snipers who posed with a logo resembling a notorious Nazi symbol.

The top Marine officer apologized for the incident and ordered his commanders to look into the use of such symbols by snipers and reconnaissance Marines and make sure they are educated on how inappropriate such actions are.

The rapid-fire announcements came on the heels of demands from a leading Jewish organization and others for President Barack Obama to order an investigation into the incident and to hold the troops accountable

Panetta met with Marine Corps Commandant James Amos on Friday to discuss, among other things, a spate of problem incidents involving Marines that have surfaced in recent months. A U.S. defense official said Panetta approved of the actions being taken by Amos to address the problems. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private.

An initial Marine investigation into the matter concluded that the troops would not be disciplined because there was no malicious intent. The Marines mistakenly believed the "SS" in the shape of white lightning bolts on the blue flag were a nod to sniper scouts — not members of Adolf Hitler's special unit that murdered millions of Jews, Catholics, gypsies and others, said Maj. Gabrielle Chapin, a spokeswoman at Camp Pendleton, California.

NO DOUBT the Obama Administration is thanking Eros that at least the Marines aren't flying the gold-and-white banner of the Vatican and refusing to take up a collection to supply the natives with free Trojans and a lifetime supply of the morning-after pill.

Because we all know that U.S. military personnel glorifying past, militaristic champions of the perfectibility of the human race -- by any means necessary -- is small potatoes compared to fighting the good fight against religious, anti-contraceptive superstition and unscientific backwardness.

Your United States government will get around to that after it's done eradicating the Real Enemy.

Whiz kids of a dying empire

This video is disgusting and Not Safe for Work. The video is, however,
instructive of what a decade of war does to a military and a country.

Some people whistle past graveyards. Not us.

No, Americans send their Marines to Afghanistan to piss on the graveyard of a terminally ill empire -- ours. Americans send their military to Afghanistan to fight in a war long past its expiration date for an empire approaching its.

Our dying empire sends its youth to fight an endless war against barbarians, all in the name of protecting the homeland, preserving our freedom and fostering democracy. Supposedly. At least that's the official story put out there by Washington and swallowed whole by the media and the public.

At some point, though, you realize something. You realize we have become that from which we must be saved -- barbarians. Barbarians who revel in killing. Barbarians who no longer can restrain the beast within.

Barbarians who piss on the dead.

WE TURN ON the television or log in to YouTube to see our young Marines -- our sons -- pissing not on the enemy -- not ultimately -- but instead on what separates us from the animals. We watch in decadent comfort as American Hessians piss on the humanity of Taliban fighters in a land known as the "graveyard of empires."

We shake our heads (or maybe not) as our sons piss on human dignity . . . and on respect for the dead . . . and on the "civilization" we say we fight to uphold. We gawk as our children -- clad in camouflage and carrying sniper rifles -- piss on their dead targets and on our own awaiting grave.

Once you have handed the moral high ground to the "barbarians" against whom you struggle, you have nothing more for which to fight. You have met the enemy . . . in the mirror.

THE BBC REPORTS on what our barbarians have done to Afghanistan's in a war exposed as having no particular point anymore:

Afghanistan's Taliban has condemned a video that appears to show US Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters.

A spokesman told the BBC: "It is not a human action, it's a wild action that is too shameful for us to talk about."

But Reuters quoted a Taliban spokesman as saying the video would not derail attempts at peace talks to end the war.

The US military is investigating the authenticity of the video and the Marine Corps said the actions were not consistent with its core values.

The footage shows four men in military fatigues appearing to urinate on three apparently lifeless men. They have brown skin, bare feet and are dressed in loose-fitting outfits. One appears to be covered in blood.

A man's voice is heard saying: "Have a great day, buddy."

The origin of the video is not known, nor is it clear who posted it online.

The men in military fatigues seem to be aware they are being filmed.

(snip)

Already, the video has stirred up anger in Afghanistan about the foreign military presence.

"The US soldiers who urinated on dead bodies of Muslims have committed a crime," Feda Mohammad told Reuters in Kabul.

"Since they've committed such a crime, we don't want them on our soil anymore."

Afghan Member of Parliament Fawzia Kofi said ordinary Afghans, no matter how they felt about the Taliban, would be upset by the video.

"It's a matter of a human being, respect to a human being," she told the BBC.

"I believe that the brutal acts that the Taliban did here during their government and even now is condemned by Afghans. So is watching a brutal act by international forces. We condemn that as well," she added.

Flush with 'victory' in Iraq

I said, war, huh
Good God, y'all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing. . . .

-- Edwin Starr,
1970

Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong wrote War for Motown in 1969, and it became a No. 1 smash in 1970 for the label's Edwin Starr.

Commercial and artistic success, however, is not the guarantor of absolute truth.

And as the United States' recent experience tells us, sometimes war is good for something. Sometimes you get a stainless-steel sh*tter out of the deal.

There's a certain logic to that, and in this Reuters report from the soon-to-be abandoned Camp Irony Victory Base.

The U.S. military is vacating Saddam Hussein's ornate palaces at its war headquarters in Baghdad and will turn the property over to Iraq next month, but Saddam's prison toilet is leaving with the Americans.

The stainless steel commode and a reinforced steel door have been removed from the cell where the dictator spent two years before his 2006 execution and is destined for a military police museum in the United States.

"We're not taking anything that the Iraqis had. We are only taking stuff that we put in, we utilized, and when we didn't need it any more, we took it home," Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Brooks, a U.S. military historian, said on a tour of the site on Monday.

The villa where American troops built a maximum-security jail for Saddam and his henchman Chemical Ali sits on a U.S. complex near Baghdad's airport known as Victory Base, which is scheduled to be handed over to Iraq's government in December as U.S. forces withdraw completely by year's end.

Surrounded by 42 km (27 miles) of blast walls and razor wire, Victory, the largest of the 505 bases the U.S. military once operated in Iraq, housed over 40,000 soldiers and up to 25,000 workers. Only 4,000 troops remain there.

I KEEP wondering how to sum this all up -- "this" being America's whole disaster of a new millennium. How can we distill, say, the Iraq experience into something concise enough to fit on a T-shirt?

I think I got something:

We came to Iraq,
got 4,483 troops killed
and 33,183 wounded,
spent a trillion bucks . . .
and all we got was this lousy toilet

THAT'S what I call a legacy.

Did I mention that, as it turns out, the MP museum at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., doesn't even want the crapper? Gee, I guess Whitfield and Strong were right after all. My apologies to them.

Hunting thugs down like radar. . . .

I wonder what Osama bin Laden's last words were.

I'd like to think they went something like "Hmm . . . lots of helicopters headed this way. Looks like the raid's here.

"RAID!?!"

That's right, Raid, the new al-Qaida killer from Uncle Sam Whacks! It hunts thugs down like radar and kills them dead!

Well, whatever. At least justice has been done, no matter the aesthetics of it all.

At this late and long-awaited hour, I have only this to say:

God bless America.

God preserve the Constitution.

God save the president.

And may God do whatever the hell He wants with that bastard bin Laden.

Even a cracked pot can cook your goose

Iraq's Secret War Files, Channel 4 television, Great Britain

Every country has its national mythology.

The national myth is how a people explains itself. It's how a people comes to understand itself as a whole -- what it believes, who it is, what is expected of it -- and that collective "authorized" biography, that national portrait shot in the most flattering light, is more about what a people wishes to believe about itself than what actually is the truth.

The United States' national mythology perhaps is one of the world's most all-pervasive, potent and uncritically accepted by its people. We Americans are always John Wayne in our national biopic, except when we prefer to be Jimmy Stewart or, on occasion, Cary Grant or James Dean.

Never are we Lee Marvin, villain of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence and many other films.

And being that the first casualty of war is the truth, our national mythology states Americans always go to war because there's no other recourse, then always conduct themselves as Audie Murphy -- never William Calley.

That's why a Fox News "opinion contributor," former State Department senior adviser Christian Whiton, thinks the United States ought to "explore opportunities for the president to designate WikiLeaks and its officers as enemy combatants, paving the way for non-judicial actions against them."

Whiton wants us to attack Europe looking for where Julian Assange, founder and chief of WikiLeaks, is hiding out? Or perhaps he just wants us to send the CIA to assassinate him and his inner circle.

Funny how the release of the classified truth that belies the national myth causes some to just drop all the pretense, allowing our dark side to show its true face.

BY PROVIDING this service to Americans -- in addition to showing us what our government, and military, was (and wasn't) doing in our name in the Iraq War, acts for which we all ultimately are responsible -- Assange becomes something of a problematic prophet. Perhaps even a mad prophet.

Frankly, the man seems rather insufferable. He was reckless in his handling of the previous "document dump" concerning the Afghan War, and imperiousness coupled with an apparent messiah complex seems to be driving some of the WikiLeaks staff away.

Still, without such a seriously flawed messenger, would we know anything about this, for example? From The New York Times:

The documents also reveal many previously unreported instances in which American soldiers killed civilians — at checkpoints, from helicopters, in operations. Such killings are a central reason Iraqis turned against the American presence in their country, a situation that is now being repeated in Afghanistan.

The archive contains reports on at least four cases of lethal shootings from helicopters. In the bloodiest, on July 16, 2007, as many as 26 Iraqis were killed, about half of them civilians. However, the tally was called in by two different people, and it is possible that the deaths were counted twice.

In another case, in February 2007, an Apache helicopter shot and killed two Iraqi men believed to have been firing mortars, even though they made surrendering motions, because, according to a military lawyer cited in the report, “they cannot surrender to aircraft, and are still valid targets.”

The shooting was unusual. In at least three other instances reported in the archive, Iraqis surrendered to helicopter crews without being shot. The Pentagon did not respond to questions from The Times about the rules of engagement for the helicopter strike.

The pace of civilian deaths served as a kind of pulse, whose steady beat told of the success, or failure, of America’s war effort. Americans on both sides of the war debate argued bitterly over facts that grew hazier as the war deepened.

The archive does not put that argument to rest by giving a precise count. As a 2008 report to Congress on the topic makes clear, the figures serve as “guideposts,’ not hard totals. But it does seem to suggest numbers that are roughly in line with those compiled by several sources, including Iraq Body Count, an organization that tracked civilian deaths using press reports, a method the Bush administration repeatedly derided as unreliable and producing inflated numbers. In all, the five-year archive lists more than 100,000 dead from 2004 to 2009, though some deaths are reported more than once, and some reports have inconsistent casualty figures. A 2008 Congressional report warned that record keeping in the war had been so problematic that such statistics should be looked at only as “guideposts.”

In a statement on Friday, Iraq Body Count, which did a preliminary analysis of the archive, estimated that it listed 15,000 deaths that had not been previously disclosed anywhere.

The archive tells thousands of individual stories of loss whose consequences are still being felt in Iraqi families today.

Misunderstandings at checkpoints were often lethal. At one Marine checkpoint, sunlight glinting off a windshield of a car that did not slow down led to the shooting death of a mother and the wounding of three of her daughters and her husband. Hand signals flashed to stop vehicles were often not understood, and soldiers and Marines, who without interpreters were unable to speak to the survivors, were left to wonder why.

According to one particularly painful entry from 2006, an Iraqi wearing a tracksuit was killed by an American sniper who later discovered that the victim was the platoon’s interpreter.

IT'S A SAD THING that Assange -- a self-appointed messiah "too busy ending two wars" to answer legitimate inquiries from a reporter -- was the one to give lie to American lies and, yet again, shatter the myth of American moral exceptionalism when it most needed shattering, for truth's sake. From the Guardian in London:

A prisoner was kneeling on the ground, blindfolded and handcuffed, when an Iraqi soldier walked over to him and kicked him in the neck. A US marine sergeant was watching and reported the incident, which was duly recorded and judged to be valid. The outcome: "No investigation required."

That was a relatively minor assault. Another of the leaked Iraqi war logs records the case of a man who was arrested by police on suspicion of preparing a suicide bomb. In the station, an officer shot him in the leg and then, the log continues, this detainee "suffered abuse which amounted to cracked ribs, multiple lacerations and welts and bruises from being whipped with a large rod and hose across his back". This was all recorded and judged to amount to "reasonable suspicion of abuse". The outcome: "No further investigation."

Other logs record not merely assaults but systematic torture. A man who was detained by Iraqi soldiers in an underground bunker reported that he had been subjected to the notoriously painful strappado position: with his hands tied behind his back, he was suspended from the ceiling by his wrists. The soldiers had then whipped him with plastic piping and used electric drills on him. The log records that the man was treated by US medics; the paperwork was sent through the necessary channels; but yet again, no investigation was required.

This is the impact of Frago 242. A frago is a "fragmentary order" which summarises a complex requirement. This one, issued in June 2004, about a year after the invasion of Iraq, orders coalition troops not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as the abuse of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition. Where the alleged abuse is committed by Iraqi on Iraqi, "only an initial report will be made … No further investigation will be required unless directed by HQ".

Frago 242 appears to have been issued as part of the wider political effort to pass the management of security from the coalition to Iraqi hands. In effect, it means that the regime has been forced to change its political constitution but allowed to retain its use of torture.

The systematic viciousness of the old dictatorship when Saddam Hussein's security agencies enforced order without any regard for law continues, reinforced by the chaotic savagery of the new criminal, political and sectarian groups which have emerged since the invasion in 2003 and which have infiltrated some police and army units, using Iraq's detention cells for their private vendettas.

Hundreds of the leaked war logs reflect the fertile imagination of the torturer faced with the entirely helpless victim – bound, gagged, blindfolded and isolated – who is whipped by men in uniforms using wire cables, metal rods, rubber hoses, wooden stakes, TV antennae, plastic water pipes, engine fan belts or chains. At the torturer's whim, the logs reveal, the victim can be hung by his wrists or by his ankles; knotted up in stress positions; sexually molested or raped; tormented with hot peppers, cigarettes, acid, pliers or boiling water – and always with little fear of retribution since, far more often than not, if the Iraqi official is assaulting an Iraqi civilian, no further investigation will be required.

THE CRITICS, on the right and in the government, are right: Julian Assange seems to be a cracked pot. And a fairly reckless one at that.

That's bad. It's bad that this is the guy upon whose judgment rests the lives of countless people.

It's worse -- immeasurably worse -- that our cracked system, our cracked military and our cracked national mythology combined to leave the likes of Assange as the go-to guy for the truth.

We won't believe Assange, or the documents he procured. We won't even believe Jimmy Stewart.

You see, even after Stewart tries to tell a reporter the truth about who really shot Liberty Valence at the end of the movie, the newspaper's editor won't print the story. He takes a look at the writer's notes, sees the God's honest truth in them . . . and burns them.

"This is the West, sir," he tells the reporter. "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Your Daily '80s: The year that was almost our last

Somewhere near Moscow.
Sept. 26, 1983.

Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant-colonel in the military intelligence section of the Soviet Union's secret service, reluctantly eased himself into the commander's seat in the underground early warning bunker south of Moscow.

It should have been his night off but another officer had gone sick and he had been summoned at the last minute.

Before him were screens showing photographs of underground missile silos in the Midwest prairies of America, relayed from spy satellites in the sky.

He and his men watched and listened on headphones for any sign of movement - anything unusual that might suggest the U.S. was launching a nuclear attack.

This was the height of the Cold War between the USSR and the U.S. Both sides packed a formidable punch - hundreds of rockets and thousands of nuclear warheads capable of reducing the other to rubble.

It was a game of nerves, of bluff and counterbluff. Who would fire first? Would the other have the chance to retaliate?

The flying time of an inter-continental ballistic missile, from the U.S. to the USSR, and vice-versa, was around 12 minutes. If the Cold War were ever to go 'hot', seconds could make the difference between life and death.

Everything would hinge on snap decisions. For now, though, as far as Petrov was concerned, more hinged on just getting through another boring night in which nothing ever happened.

Except then, suddenly, it did. A warning light flashed up, screaming red letters on a white background - 'LAUNCH. LAUNCH'. Deafening sirens wailed. The computer was telling him that the U.S. had just gone to war.

The blood drained from his face. He broke out in a cold sweat. But he kept his nerve. The computer had detected missiles being fired but the hazy screens were showing nothing untoward at all, no tell-tale flash of an missile roaring out of its silo into the sky. Could this be a computer glitch rather than Armageddon?

Instead of calling an alert that within minutes would have had Soviet missiles launched in a retaliatory strike, Petrov decided to wait.

The warning light flashed again - a second missile was, apparently, in the air. And then a third. Now the computer had stepped up the warning: 'Missile attack imminent!'

But this did not make sense. The computer had supposedly detected three, no, now it was four, and then five rockets, but the numbers were still peculiarly small. It was a basic tenet of Cold War strategy that, if one side ever did make a preemptive strike, it would do so with a mass launch, an overwhelming force, not this dribble.

Petrov stuck to his common-sense reasoning. This had to be a mistake.

-- The Daily Mail,
Dec. 29, 2007

Afghanistan Now

Wasilla?

One of the "Afghanistan Now" suspects is a soldier from Wasilla?

I guess Sarah Palin not only can see Russia from up there in Alaska, but My Lai, too.

Here's something from ABC News that only reinforces the view that Afghanistan is the new Vietnam War. In every way that made the Vietnam War the Vietnam War:

Dressed in a t-shirt and Army shorts, a 22-year-old corporal from Wasilla, Alaska casually describes on a video tape made by military investigators how his unit's "crazy" sergeant randomly chose three unarmed, innocent victims to be murdered in Afghanistan.

Corporal Jeremy N. Morlock is one of five GI's charged with pre-meditated murder in a case that includes allegations of widespread drug use, the collection of body parts and photos of the U.S. soldiers holding the Afghan bodies like hunter's trophies.

All five soldiers were part of the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, of the 2nd Infantry Division, based at Ft. Lewis-McChord, Washington. In charging documents released by the Army, the military alleges that the five, Staff Sgt. Calvin R. Gibbs, Spec Adam C. Winfield, Spec. Michael S. Wagnon II, Pfc. Andrew H. Holmes and Morlock were involved in one or more of three murders that took place between January and May of this year.

Lawyers and family members of the soldiers say they all intend to fight the charges.

An Article 32 hearing for Morlock, the military equivalent of a grand jury, is scheduled later today at Fort Lewis-McChord, Washington.

On the tape, obtained by ABC News, Morlock admits his role in the deaths of three Afghans but claims the plan was organized by his unit's sergeant, Calvin Gibbs, who is also charged with pre-meditated murder.

"He just really doesn't have any problems with f---ing killing these people," Morlock said on tape as he laid out the scenario he said the sergeant used to make it seem the civilians were killed in action.

"And so we identify a guy. Gibbs makes a comment, like, you know, you guys wanna wax this guy or what?" Morlock told military investigators during an interview videotaped in May at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan.

The corporal said Gibbs gave orders to open fire on the civilian at the same time Gibbs threw a hand grenade at the victim.

"He pulled out one of his grenades, an American grenade, you know, popped it, throws it, tells me where to go to whack this guy, kill this guy, kill this guy," Morlock told the investigators.

Morlock said Sergeant Gibbs carried a Russian grenade to throw next to the body of the dead Afghan, to make it seem he was about to attack the American soldiers.

The corporal said he opened fire as directed, fearful of not following Gibbs' orders.

"It's definitely not the right thing to do," Morlock told the investigators. "But I mean, when you got a squad leader bringing you into that, that type of real, that mindset, and he believes that you're on board with that, there's definitely no way you wanted him to think otherwise."

The investigator asked Morlock, "Because you felt maybe the next shot might be coming your way?"

"You never know. Exactly," answered Morlock. "I mean Gibbs talked about how easy it is, people disappear on the battlefield all the time."

YOU KNOW, our young barbarians are out there in their own personal Heart of Darkness fighting the Taliban's young barbarians, and the only difference I'm seeing here is that the Taliban's young barbarians a) at least aren't violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice, b) rules of engagement, or c) the Geneva Convention, because they don't have a) or b) and didn't sign on to c).

So who's worse? Their barbarians, who don't know any better but come from a land where life is cheap . . . or ours, who are supposed to know better but operate with minds rotted by violent video games, violent music and a society where life is cheap?

Empire's a bitch. Ask Joseph Conrad.

Or Francis Ford Coppola.

They like us! They really like us!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Well, I think that Afghanistan venture is going rather swimmingly, don't you?

The news is so encouraging, and the happy natives seem so grateful for our benevolent presence. What?

Uh . . . I suppose you can believe the following report from MSNBC if you like -- and that horrid, horrid video from the "mainstream, lamestream media," but I am obligated to caution you against such anti-American behavior.

WHY WOULD any patriot believe this kind of communistic agitprop, which we absotively must refudiate at every turn?

Six U.S. service members have been killed in Afghanistan, bringing the toll for July to at least 66 and making it the deadliest month for American forces in the near-nine-year war.

A NATO statement Friday said three troops died in two separate blasts in southern Afghanistan Thursday. The statement gave no nationalities, but U.S. officials said all three were Americans. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity pending notification of kin.

Another statement issued later Friday said three more had died, one following an insurgent attack and twin a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan.

U.S. and NATO commanders had warned that casualties would rise as the international military force ramps up the war against the Taliban, especially in their southern strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar provinces. President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan last December in a bid to turn back a resurgent Taliban.

British and Afghan troops launched a new offensive Friday in the Sayedebad area of Helmand to try to deny insurgents a base from which to launch attacks in Nad Ali and Marjah, the British military announced. Coalition and Afghan troops have sought to solidify control of Marjah after overrunning the poppy-farming community five months ago.

The six deaths raised the U.S. death toll for the month to at least 66, according to an Associated Press count. June had been the deadliest month for the U.S. with 60 deaths. There have been 264 U.S. service members killed in combat and noncombat situations so far this year in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, according to the AP.

DON'T YOU believe all this talk about dead American soldiers -- they're resting. Or maybe they're stunned.

That easily could happen, as wild as those Afghan parties get. Just like the one above, which the lamestream media wants you to believe was a riot.

Libtards.

How we fight

Forget that our A-Number One "ally" in the Afghan War -- Pakistan -- is playing for the other side, too.

Forget that our whole game plan since 2001 has been that the locals are more or less just like us and want the same things as any reasonable Westerner, and that from such naiveté, much mayhem has ensued.

Forget that it wasn't that long ago that the Red Army got its ass handed to it by herdsmen with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and old rifles.

Forget that the U.S. Army, the Marine Corps and the whole NATO shooting match is getting their asses handed to them right now by herdsmen with heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, IEDs . . . and materiél that mysteriously made its way from the Afghan "government" to Taliban fighters.


FORGET THAT this war, and the one winding down in Iraq, are bleeding the U.S. treasury dry amid the ruins of a wrecked economy in an era of unsustainable sovereign debt.

Forget that we're writing $500 million checks to the double-crossing Pakistani government, while Congress for weeks and weeks refused to keep unemployment checks coming to millions of cast-off American workers.

Forget that the money spent each year on an unwinnable war fought for now-nebulous reasons could by itself fund -- and fund well -- cash-starved and unimplemented blueprints for restoring Louisiana's disappearing coastline.

Just remember -- with the WikiLeaks release of this generation's Pentagon Papers -- that the South Vietnamese government looked like a model of legitimacy and propriety compared to the nightmare we're trying to prop up in Afghanistan, as graphically pointed out in one 2007 U.S. Army dispatch the Guardian has highlighted:

TM HADES (HHC 508th STB) conducts humanitarian assistance delivery on 200330ZMAR07 VIC VC 9126724284 IOT provide relief to citizens of the Kharwar District affected by winter weather and build trust between the ANP/IRoA and the local populace.

Initially, the only signs of town inhabitants were trash and feces in the streets. The people stayed inside until the Apaches left station; they were mostly unresponsive, even when we told them that we had brought HA- they were not impressed as they did not believe that they would get any of it. HUMINT collection was virtually fruitless.

What little infrastructure they have is crumbling and the quality of life is extremely poor. Come summer and spring, the hygiene conditions will worsen and be cause for concern.

HUMINT Assessment: As we walked into the Bazaar, we noticed no one was in the street. We could see people in their shops; doors were closed and very few smiles or waves were returned. A few people were receptive as we spoke to them. We did receive some mean looks. They wondered why we were coming in with such force. We told them that we had a lot EOF HA for their village. They expressed concern that the HA would not be fairly distributed. Security was not an issue, according to the people with whom we spoke. Their main concern is the water supply and buildings collapsing due to the recent rain. They said people who have been working outside of Afghanistan will be returning in a nother month or two. These people have been in Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

Key Leader Engagement Assessment: Met with MAJ Rafiki (ANP Chief of Police), Mirr Akbar (Criminal Officer), COL Latifi (Logar ANP XO), and the Mullah/Platoon Leader. Took a tour of the compound and spoke about the physical security issues they were having and also made some recommendations about their improvements. We discussed previous attacks on the ANP station and the reasons for them (i.e.- why they were coming from different directions, etc). After the tour, we sat down to chai. We discussed the HA distribution in detail with the ANP CoP. From the first five minutes, there seemed to be an ongoing discussion between COL Latifi and MAJ Rafiki. As the engagement progressed, the interaction became more heated. The interpreter explained that MAJ Rafiki was complaining about something.

Absent was the Sub-governor. We were told that he would be there, but he decided not to come. He doesnt live in the town- he lives about 30-45 minutes away and drives himself to work. He does not have a driver or a bodyguard and it is strange that he drives himself (alone) to work in Kharwar. This may indicate that he is not worried about anti-government or government threats, which may mean he has both in his pocket.

The ANP CoP seems like the best among the worst; he understood what we were talking about concerning the equitable distribution of the HA. However, he made several comments about the people of Kharwar- how they should get jobs and how he had little influence. We got the impression that he has little concern for the needs of his people. We tried to impress upon him the difference between the people and a civil servant and he seemed to understand, if not agree. The ANP CoP is from the Konar district, so he has no family in Kharwar, which is a good thing as he may normally be tempted to give hand-outs to his family first. We discussed the plan to use the Shura, the Red Crescent and the Sub-governor to distribute the HA; he seemed to understand what we were saying about his job being easier if the people trusted him to support them. He mentioned that he had a meeting with the Taliban Leaders in Kharwar. At that point, we asked him Do you know who they are?! and he said yes, of course. At this point in the conversation, COL Latifi kicked out the criminal officer and the mullah/platoon leader. We began to discuss a mission that the ANP had with the 10th MTN. They were talking about what a failure the mission was because of the terrible intelligence they had received. We tried to ask about the Taliban leaders and the recent intel we have received, but at that point, the apaches returned on station and it was time to establish the HLZ.

As we were walking out, the heated discussion between COL Latifi and MAJ Rafiki flared up again- apparently, the Criminal Officer had drawn his weapon on MAJ Rafiki and threatened him either this morning or last night. According to MAJ Rafiki, the Criminal Officer had been bribed to kill him. MAJ Rafiki said that he was going to quit if he had to continue to work with the Criminal Officer. We were trying to leave, but a crowd of ANP gathered and the heated discussion almost came to a head. We loudly told COL Latifi that we had to get on the helicopter and if he wanted me to arrest the criminal officer, we would. He said that he didnt want to arrest him, but wanted to take him back to Pul-e-Alam for interrogation and to fire him at least. We searched the Criminal Officer and found one 9mm pistol with 3 rounds in the magazine. We took the weapon from him and returned it to COL Latifi after we landed at Pul-e-Alam.

The Mullah/Platoon Leader assumed himself in positions of closeness to whomever he felt was the most powerful of the group. We asked who he was, and was told he was a platoon leader. We asked his name and they called him Mullah- according to the Terp, this is strange.

Other: As we walked through the bazaar, there were no shop doors open and few people peeked out from behind windows or curtains. The bazaar was a canalizing tunnel and the impression was of walking into a trap/ambush. There were stray animals and barnyard feces in the street and trash was thrown out of doorways without concern. There were several dead dogs inside the ANP compound and throughout the town. Also, there was human feces everywhere, without regard for foot traffic or modesty. Several of the bunkers and trenches had obviously been used as latrines, despite the fact that there is a latrine facility in the compound. Not only was the facility in disrepair, it appeared as though the occupants were maliciously negligent. Yesterday, we gave several tarps and sandbags to the ANP to patch a caved in roof, but the tarps had not been used to make any repairs.

Note: The DSHKA gunner is a LT, who apparently spends his nights on the megaphone, talking to the Taliban- taunting them and telling them what a good shot he is. At least one person in Kharwar understands PsyOps.

AND REMEMBER that we are governed by men and women who think such a figurative -- and literal, too -- s***hole is worth the expenditure of a single American life (and billions of American dollars) long past the expiration date of any clear strategic rationale . . . or any reasonable chance at "victory," whatever that might look like anymore.